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Submitted
by
The Angel of Vengeance
on Friday August 10, 2007 @12:58PM

The Angel of Vengeance (666) writes "A recent civil engineering graduate from the University of Houston was faced with a dilemma: It was going to cost him $1200 to get the Air Conditioning fixed on his car.

Like a true Engineer, however, he came up with another solution: He hacked a home AC unit and attached it to his car via the sun roof.

BartlebyScrivener writes "After installing IE7, I could no longer click on hyperlinks in Thunderbird emails. However, I was magically able to do so in Outlook.
When I checked file associations under file types, Windows still had Firefox as the default browser and indeed it acted like the default browser, meaning, if I double clicked on a link outside of Thunderbird, Firefox opened it.
The next thing I noticed was that the Python module webbrowser.py which had worked fine for months, suddenly gave me this error: "WindowsError: [Errno 1155] No application is associated with the specified file for this operation."
I found the fix at Mozilla:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Default_browser
Apparently, even though it LOOKS and ACTS like Firefox is still your
default browser after an IE7 upgrade, it's not.
To fix, you must run from the commandline:
firefox.exe -silent -nosplash -setDefaultBrowser
Which also fixes the webbrowser. py problem.
At least so far.
rd"

An anonymous reader writes "The FBI is involved in a voting machines investigation in Maryland. The gist is that a former elections official received some disks containing Diebold machine source code.
http://www.votingmachinesprocon.org/fbiinvestigati on.htm
That code is not supposed to be shared with anyone. The code's circulation could mean that the software used to program voting machines is not secure. Diebold says the code is a few versions old, and that receipt of the disks does not reflect a software security risk.
The FBI is now investigating, and Diebold continues to look sketchy. In fact, they have yet to rebut Princeton's Dr. Felten who hacked a Diebold machine in two minutes. A website called Voting Machines ProCon.org tried to contact Diebold repeatedly for this information to no avail. http://www.votingmachinesprocon.org/princeton.htm# rebuttal"

mikesd81 writes "The Associated Press has an article about students producing a movie using a cellular phone. From the article:

The cameras capture the young man walking down the stairs, reciting a monologue about the three things people should know about him: His favorite movie is "Gone with the Wind," he loves roller coasters and he hates when people don't take him seriously.

The shot is complicated and takes several attempts to perfect. But there's no big camera equipment, no expert sound system and no reels of film to capture the moment.

This exercise is part of a new Boston University class sponsored by Amp'd Mobile and taught by director Jan Egleson. The students have challenged each other to produce movies through the semester with cell phone besides the video and sound quality issues. Amp'd will then distribute them to their customers."

rah1420 writes "Gizmag just wrote about "Instant FM Music," a USB dongle that plugs into your computer's USB Port and records FM and Web Radio stations. You can record the playlist, tag the songs for easy playback, all without that nasty DRM."

An anonymous reader writes "Human beings may be forced to be 'microchipped' like pet dogs, a shocking official report into the rise of the Big Brother state has warned.
The microchips — which are implanted under the skin — allow the wearer's movements to be tracked and store personal information about them.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-2337256 4-details/Britons+%27could+be+microchipped+like+do gs+in+a+decade%27/article.do
hey could be used by companies who want to keep tabs on an employee's movements or by Governments who want a foolproof way of identifying their citizens — and storing information about them.
The prospect of 'chip-citizens' — with its terrifying echoes of George Orwell's 'Big Brother' police state in the book 1984 — was raised in an official report for Britain's Information Commissioner Richard Thomas into the spread of surveillance technology."

prostoalex writes "News.com.com interviews Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu Linux. Shuttleworth shares his thoughts on Red Hat (he thinks they will still dominate the niche Linux markets, but new markets will appear) and summarizes his plan to make Ubuntu profitable (distribute desktop OS for free, charge for server OS when you got a foot in the door)."

Gooseygoose writes "This is the first version of a monthly post about the last production numbers from Canadian oil sands (also called Tar sands). If these oil sands are going to be a viable source of energy to replace light sweet crude, we need to understand the potentials of and flaws in it. (Lots of charts, graphs, and resources).

Da Fokka writes "In 35 of the 458 counties of the Netherlands, plans to use electronic voting machines were scrapped because they were not deemed safe enough. Research by TNO and the AIVD revealed a serious security flaw in one of the four types of voting computers used. The investigation was triggered by Wij Vertrouwen Stemcomputers Niet, a group of concerned citizens on which Slashdot reported earlier."

peterdaly writes "Automatic commercial detection is the "killer app" feature that none of the commercial DVR's dare to include. MythTV's automatic commercial detection does a great job of properly separating commercials from content. Here's how the commercial flagging works."